Gendered Speech | Why Women and Men Speech is Different | Are There Any Physical or Social Reasons

There are various reasons why men and women speech is different. In general, men have longer vocal tracts (approx. 17 cm), larger larynges and thicker vocal folds than women (approx. 14 cm). The result is that men speak in a lower pitch range (80–200 Hertz) than women (120–400 Hertz). The term pitch is used to describe the effect of vibration in the vocal folds, with slower vibration making voices sound lower and rapid vibration making voices sound higher.
In normal speech there is substantial overlap in pitch ranges between men and women. There may be a tendency to exaggerate the differences to sound more “like a man” or more “like a woman.”
Women's Speech:
1. Rising Intonation: Women speaking American English have more pitch movement, that is, more rising and falling. Women have rising intonation at the end of statements.
For example, 'It happened near San Diego ↑, in southern California ↑'
2. Hedges & Tag Questions: Women have higher frequency of hedges and tag questions (I hate it when it rains all day, don’t you?) in their speech. Hedges are words or phrases used to indicate that we are not really sure that what we are saying is sufficiently correct or complete, for example, sort of, kind of, maybe, it seems, etc. Tag questions are short questions consisting of an auxiliary (e.g. don’t) and a pronoun (e.g. you), added to the end of a statement (e.g. I hate it when it rains all day, don’t you?)
Reasons:
They features are used more often by women when expressing opinions. These features of women’s speech all seem to be ways of inviting agreement with an idea rather than asserting it.
Men's Speech: Men tend to use more assertive forms and “strong” language (It’s too damn cold in here!). It means men do not use 'tag questions and hedges' as frequently as women.
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